Does the Trailer for Red Tails Compare to The Tuskegee Airmen?

Just hours after George Lucas and Lucasfilm announced a release date for the long, long, long in development Tuskegee Airmen action-drama Red Tails, the first trailer has debuted online. “We count our victories by the bombers we get to their targets, by the husbands we return to their wives, by the fathers we give back to their children,” says a very determined Terrence Howard at a crucial moment in the very determined two-minute clip. Sounds heroic, Terry! But how does Red Tails compare to the 1995 HBO film, The Tuskegee Airmen? Pretty well, actually! In fact, they look fairly similar, save for the Lucasfilm-enhanced scenes of aerial battle in Red Tails, which dwarf similar scenes in Airmen. (That is Cuba Gooding Jr. appearing in both films to muddy the waters further.) All of which raises the question: Do you like your Tuskegee Airmen historical dramas laced with the stoicism of Terrence Howard or the stoicism of Laurence Fishburne? That answer will go pretty far in determining your interest in Red Tails when it’s released on Jan. 20, 2012. VERDICT: Delayed on the tarmac.

Waltz With Bashir

In 1982, Ari Folman was a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In 2006, he meets with a friend from his army service period, who tells him of the nightmares connected to his experiences from the Lebanon War. Folman is surprised to find that he does not remember a thing from that period. Later that night he has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the reality of which he is unable to tell. In his memory (the scene depicted on the poster above), he and his soldier friends are bathing at night by the seaside in Beirut under the light of flares descending over the city. Folman rushes off to meet another friend from his army service, who advises him to discuss it with other people who were in Beirut at the same time in order to understand what happened there and to revive his own memories. Folman converses with friends, a psychologist and the reporter Ron Ben-Yishai, who was in Beirut at the time.

The film ends with animation dissolving into actual footage of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.